by Freya North
‘What the fuck happened to you, Arlo, to make you this way?’
‘The worst thing in the world,’ he said, ‘but I'm paying the price.’
Chapter Twenty-eight
Yesterday, Petra had spent the rest of the day hiding in the studio, pretending to work. During the evening, she pored over Charlton's various maps; staring at the precise position of Roseberry Hall School as if hoping to elicit secret signs, as if the harder she focused on the Ordnance Survey map, the more she might be able to activate some kind of psychic CCTV imagery. She knew it was far-fetched but she justified that it was probably what Kitty might suggest so she did it anyway. She didn't dare take the sensible, direct route straight to the school gates, as Gina would probably advise. She did not even take to her bike and simply cycle past the place, though today was a perfect Sunday for a gentle ride and the school was only three or four miles away. Instead, she pegged off in the opposite direction with a baseball cap pulled down low. She said to herself that it was only a matter of time before she and Arlo would meet, therefore she'd give herself all the time in the world to await such a preordained occasion. Charlton permitting.
It was perfect ice-cream weather but she didn't dare go back to Great Ayton for fear of bumping into Arlo. She justified that the day she actually felt like bumping into him would be the day when at last they would meet. Fate. It had to be fate. So, in the opposite direction, she picked at her packed lunch, sitting amongst early bluebells on a steep slope off the Great Broughton road. She hoped Arlo was indeed having an ice cream today. Because, if she had summoned the courage to ask in the shop after him, perhaps he would ask after her too. Or even if he didn't ask, perhaps he'd be told. And then Petra thought that perhaps she ought to go to the shop tomorrow to make it clear that should he come in, should he ask, or should he not ask but come in anyway, then he could be informed. Oh, and please tell him it's not about the money.
This visit, Petra had kept her phone on and was bolstered by the encouraging messages texted to her from Hatton Garden and Hong Kong. Her mother left her a message apologizing for flooding the kitchen but hoping she liked the hemp hand cream. Charlton left a message telling her to expect a courier, some time on Monday, with two small pieces of his work for her to finish.
Sorry, Arlo, she said to herself, can't track you down tomorrow either. I have to wait in for a delivery.
She hadn't sleepwalked so far, which she read as a very positive sign. But there again, she hadn't really slept much at all since arriving, which she told herself was quite daft really.
Chapter Twenty-nine
By Tuesday lunch-time, Petra could kid herself no longer; her timidity was starting to get on her own nerves and she was having difficulty justifying further vacillations. She hadn't come all this way to do pieces of out-work for Charlton, or to take in the fresh country air, or to look at bluebells for inspiration (despite them providing an idea for a necklace in gold and enamel). She'd come up to Yorkshire to see Arlo. And she now knew where he lived, where he worked. So she wouldn't have to wander the moors hoping to be found. Yet, though he'd been within spitting distance of her for the last four days, she'd doggedly set her sights in the opposite direction.
Now, though, she felt focused. She stuck with the baseball cap, reasoning that it would keep the sun out of her eyes. She dispensed with the idea of taking a packed lunch and merely slowing down past Roseberry Hall en route to a nice place for a picnic, because she acknowledged she felt too fizzed to eat anyway. Though she had no intention of actually being seen, she still eschewed a T-shirt for her favourite Whistles top because, as Mrs McNeil had told her on many occasions, feeling good about looking good helps you feel good full stop.
She cycled through Stokesley and out onto the old Thirsk road, following it for a couple of miles before forking left at a large navy blue sign with gold lettering which somehow she'd never noticed before. Roseberry Hall Public School for Boys. It was here – behind this vast stretch of stone wall. Because of the insistent uphill gradient, she had to maintain a certain riding pace or the bike would wobble and the slog seem harder. At first, she assumed this was a minor road off which the school was placed. But every few yards smaller blue and gold signs sprang from the grass announcing Slow! Or 10mph. Or Hump. Or Ramp. Humps and ramps felt the same on a bike, Petra thought to herself. It was then that she noticed large iron gates ahead, stretching across the road, held by heavy stone jambs crowned with fancy turrets. This wasn't a road, this was a private drive. She thought of her old school, fashioned out of four houses crammed into a domestic side-street. She remembered Arlo's school, Victorian purpose-built with an impressive approach and abundant playing courts at the back but still compacted into a limited acreage. But both schools were essentially urban and their scale was subjected to the restrictions of space and the compromised greenery of city life. She'd never seen anything like the grandeur of Roseberry Hall Public School for Boys. In fact, she couldn't actually see the school buildings themselves. The rolling grounds obscured them from view and the majestic gates barred entry.
What about the intercom, Petra? All visitors please ring.
She lay the bike down and hovered by the buzzer, standing on tiptoe, craning her neck, moving from one side of the drive to the other. Considered pressing the button. Thought about it a lot. But she didn't. Because she couldn't see a thing, she convinced herself he probably wasn't in anyway. Come back again later. Or tomorrow. Or ring first to make an appointment. Or perhaps write.
Or wander the moors, waiting to be found.
Or go back to London and that's the end of it.
After an afternoon spent skulking in the studio doing Charlton's work, Petra comforted herself with a fish-and-chip supper, doused in salt, non-brewed condiment and ketchup; eaten from her lap, straight off the paper. It bolstered her spirits and she decided to take advantage of two more hours of daylight and go for a nice cycle ride to work off her dinner. As she set off, she noticed a dark smear on the thigh of her jeans and realized it was ketchup which had seeped through the chip paper. It wasn't worth changing. It was only a recce. It wasn't as if she was heading out to meet anyone. If she had been, she'd have taken off her scruffy work top and done something about her hair which was currently spewing around her shoulders like a gorgon in need of a shower. Locks falling over her face in dusty brown misshapen coils – like telephone wire that has been pulled too much. Twists and turns – as if her hair could no more decide which direction to travel than she herself could.
Which way shall I go?
North, south, east or west?
The Helmsley road is nice. It was quiet this afternoon.
Oh! Will you look where I am!
Those sodding great gates.
And Petra starts to laugh because somehow, earlier that afternoon, she hadn't noticed how the gates span only the tarmac drive itself, restricting impromptu access by unannounced vehicles. Unannounced visitors on foot, especially those like Petra wearing sturdy walking boots, are free to clamber the grassy bank flanking the driveway. There's no sign to say they can't. There's no dedicated buzzer to press to ask if they can. So she leaves her bike and clambers upwards and her breath is quite taken away as she looks down on the school sitting regally on its verdant carpet. The scale is astonishing. It's beautiful. Look at the space. Lights on in some windows, not in others, creating an extravagant silhouette. It's like a private world, Petra muses, one of privilege and peace. The scale of the place – against which she would only be seen as a tiny speck were she noticed at all – emboldens her to explore further. This is a very different type of grass. It's posh velvet lawn, she thinks, as she bends to brush her hands over the surface. She's surprised to see rabbits dink and dart a few yards ahead of her, as if surely they are far too common to be allowed here. She doesn't like the thought of rabbit droppings soiling the immaculate surface.
Look! Schoolboys. The scurry and scamp of pupils exiting the large hall and dispersing to smaller buildings. Probably
just had their supper, now it's off to prep before pillow fights in their dorms. What do the teachers do now? Do they disappear into town for a swift pint or two? Stokesley? Maybe they have their own bar, somewhere to relax. Or perhaps they have to supervise letter-writing to mummies and daddies before doing the rounds calling, Lights out!
The architecture looks so beautiful. Especially in this light. Petra has to get closer. Look at those funny little angular stone buildings dotted here and there, lights on in some, off in others. Fancy little outbuildings. Little follies.
The sound of a voice, male and stern, bellowing, Pipe down, Arladale!
No boy can be called Arladale, surely, Petra wonders. Perhaps it's a surname – oh, but surely they don't call children by their surnames in the twenty-first century, do they?
Well, if you get much closer, Petra, you'll be able to ask.
*
Footsteps behind her. She freezes. She's trespassing. She'll be given a detention. Or, worse, expelled from school before she's even got there. Someone behind her. She's helpless not to turn her head a fraction though she keeps her eyes focused straight ahead. The someone stops. A short, low chuckle. Clears his throat. She knows that voice. He knows that profile.
‘Hullo,’ says Arlo. ‘Are you lost?’
‘No,’ says Petra Flint. ‘Just waiting to be found.’
Chapter Thirty
Arlo lay on his bed, fully clothed, staring at the ceiling. It was a view he knew very well, its hairline cracks, wisps of cobweb and uneven paintwork frequently providing interest for his eyes to scrutinize and his mind to mull over when sleep eluded him. As if sheep for him to count were dotted up there. But just then, it provided a clean, flat screen of non-distracting nothingness against which he could play over and again in his mind's eye what had just happened.
Petra Flint, once again at his school. Not in uniform, but in scruffy clothes. Not as a schoolgirl, but as a woman. And himself no Sixth Former; a master now. How grown-up does that sound! How pompous! Seventeen years. A long time. Yet the hindsight of that seventeen years' distance shows him how vivid she was to him back then. Despite only seeing her sporadically during term-time alone, seventeen years ago. But that was the magic of schooldays – its potency truly apparent only in retrospect? It was something he tried to impress on his pupils, however intangible it must seem to them at this point in time.
‘You think one day is much the same as the next, gentlemen, that your school years are one long drag of homework and exams, rules and restrictions. But take it from an old git like me – when you look back on your schooldays, you'll see them as perhaps the most perfect period of your life, when friendships are made with no complexity and community is at its most nurturing and, believe it or not, at its least judgemental. And the world at large is wide open and welcoming.’
Yes, Mr Savidge. No, Mr Savidge. You get on our nerves a bit, when you drone on about the good old days, Mr Savidge. Can't you play us the Sex Pistols instead, Mr Savidge? And waffle on about agitprop and the libertines of punk rock and the godfather of them all, Mozart?
Though there was much of interest on Arlo's bedroom ceiling tonight, far more fascinating was what he clenched tightly in his fist, resting this hand directly over his heart. He unfurled his fingers, unfolded the paper and regarded the eleven numbers.
How Petra had laughed when he told her he didn't have a mobile phone.
And how he'd grinned back when she'd asked how he'd be calling her then.
‘Bell's conventional apparatus,’ he'd said. And she'd looked all confused until he said, Land-line, Petra, land-line. Alexander Graham Bell and all that. I'll phone you from the land-line.
Promise that you will?
I promise.
Or shall I phone you tonight anyway, to say I'm back safely? What's your number? Your land-line?
I don't actually know.
You don't know?
Nope. Not off by heart. I have it written down somewhere.
Arlo!
Amazing, isn't it, this strange fossilized being that I've become.
Then she had paused and shuffled and had said, I think time has preserved you rather well, Arlo.
Thank you, Petra. Failing light is kind. It's almost dark. You should go.
Will you phone me, then, to check I'm back safely? From your land-line?
I will.
Arlo looked at the clock. She should be back by now.
* * *
Petra felt sick with anticipation. She'd been nervous enough cycling back with only the feeble flicker from the dynamo light on the bike. Now, back at the Old Stables, she was suddenly anxious that Arlo might not call. She walked around with her handset, twisting it this way and that, raising or lowering it, seeing where the signal was strongest. Lucy had sent a text asking for any news but Petra didn't want to jinx the situation by responding just yet. Over and again, she replayed every moment of the encounter with Arlo, breaking off at regular intervals to check her phone's signal, to double-check she didn't have it on silent.
God, how unfit he must think me to be, not to have phoned me by now!
How long had their interlude lasted? Half an hour or so. He'd escorted her back to her bike; his hand at her elbow, her shoulder blade, her waist; away from the conurbation of fancy stonework, over the velvet grass, back along the drive to a small wooded area to the left of the gates. They rested their backs against the wall.
‘You look so well, Petra. All grown up but just the same.’
‘I'm glad it's getting dark because there's ketchup on my jeans and this is my work shirt. And I'm sorry about my hair. It has a life of its own.’
‘At least you have hair! Are you working around here?’
‘Sort of.’
‘What did you grow up to be, Miss Flint? A potter?’
‘A jeweller.’
‘Wow.’
‘And you teach, Arlo?’
‘Yes, I love it.’
‘Your music?’
‘I teach music.’
‘That's how we met. Through your music.’
‘That's how we met. And how we came to know each other better – remember me playing for you, while you did pottery class in the summer term? How we'd sit and chat too?’
‘Of course I do. Do you remember the first time, though, at my school in the spring?’
‘Vividly.’
‘I remember the song, Arlo. “Among The Flowers”.’
‘I'm flattered.’
‘But I heard it not so long ago too – on the radio. Only it wasn't you.’
‘I know.’
And he'd looked a little pensive. And she wanted to know why but didn't feel she could ask just then.
‘Another time, Petra,’ he'd said, anticipating. And he'd smiled, a little sadly, and tucked a squiggle of her hair behind her ear. And for a split second they both wondered whether they were on the cusp of their very first kiss.
Yet there seemed no rush.
The only urgency was the failing light.
So that was when they had talked about telephones and he had told her to go.
She prepared to pedal away. He held the handlebars steady. His ran his index finger gently over the swoops and peaks of her knuckles.
‘I did look for you, Petra,’ he told her. ‘I didn't really know where to start. I assumed you'd gone.’
‘I had.’
‘But you're back now. For how long?’
‘I don't know, really.’
‘Stay awhile.’
‘OK.’
* * *
Arlo looks at her number and he looks at the clock and he thinks, She might well be taken aback that I haven't yet phoned. We parted a couple of hours ago.
But what am I going to say?
And what is this going to start?
And what am I thinking – starting something at all?
And Petra is looking at her phone and she's thinking, Why doesn't he ring? If he doesn't ring tonight, I'm leaving tomorrow.
‘Hullo, Miss Flint.’
‘Hullo, Arlo.’
‘Get back OK?’
‘Yes, no problem.’
‘Good. Sorry I didn't phone earlier. I was marking.’
‘Oh, don't you worry about that – I've been busy faffing around anyway.’
Pause. Fill it!
‘How mad is all of this, Petra?’
‘We could just look on it as a perfectly simple twist of fate.’
‘I like that idea.’
‘Well, that's what I'll do.’
‘Me too, then.’
‘That way, when we next see each other, we can just pick up where we left off and not worry about marvelling about serendipity and happenstance.’
‘And kismet and karma.’
‘Exactly!’
‘How long has it been?’
‘Two hours, Arlo. And seventeen years.’
‘How about we start from now. Or, rather, how about tomorrow night? Can I take you out for supper?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘What else do you like, apart from chips and ketchup?’
‘There's the Thai in Stokesley – do you know it?’
‘Of course. I've lived here for four years.’
‘I haven't been – but it always looks buzzing.’
‘It's great. Let's go there. Let's meet there at seven thirty. Tomorrow.’
‘It's a date.’
Pause. Fill it!
‘Goodnight, Petra. See you tomorrow.’
‘Night, Arlo.’
He felt moved by the thought of Petra, on her own, passing the Thai but settling for chips. If only he'd known. If only he'd known earlier that she was here. If he had known earlier, where would they be by now? Further down the road? He shuddered. He wasn't worried about the path of true love running steep, he was worried about the terrible places it could lead to. He'd been there once before. Hadn't he decided that it was a journey he wouldn't be taking again?